


Smuggler's Blues

by kanonkita



Series: Inspired by Mission [2]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Gen, M/M, Missionverse, Transformer Sparklings, but he can't resist a baby, implied mechpreg, lockdown is a scoundrel, organic-style cybertronian reproduction, tiny Mission is already grumpy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 07:27:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17862968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanonkita/pseuds/kanonkita
Summary: Well, at least now Lockdown had a clue as to why Starscream had defected so suddenly, but why it had to be his problem he wasn’t sure.





	Smuggler's Blues

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Mission](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6643972) by [Spoon888](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spoon888/pseuds/Spoon888). 



> This is completely non-cannon because in Spoon's official timeline of things, Lockdown was very aware that Starscream was carrying long before Mission was born, but whatever. Think of it as an AU of an AU. ;) I love her morally-ambiguous Lockdown and couldn't resist the urge to write some drabbles about him.

Random freighters floating in the middle of space were the space whales of the piracy industry. Everyone knew someone who knew someone who had at some point stumbled upon a ship that didn’t answer any hails, honestly had no surviving crew, and on which they found the haul of a lifetime that allowed them to set up in style on Hedonia V for the rest of their life. Lockdown had always scoffed at the improbability of the stories until today.

“Freighter 113, this is yer final warning. Reply or prepare for boarding,” the bounty hunter/smuggler growled into the comms for the fifth time. Again, nothing but static.

Lockdown sat back in his pilot’s seat and scratched at his prominent chin with the end of his hook. His scanners weren’t registering any spark signatures on board, it was true, but the ship was so heavily firewalled that he wouldn’t be surprised if it had scanning shields on it as well. No one put those kinds of protections on their ship unless it was carrying something truly precious. Yet not precious enough that they’d bothered to hire someone to sit on the comms at all hours.

Was it worth the risk of boarding a ship that was potentially armed to the teeth with safety measures for a treasure whose existence he couldn’t verify?

“Fer us, I reckon it is,” Lockdown chuckled, glancing behind himself at the stash of heavy artillery hung on his wall.

 

* * *

 

He’d expected a barrage of laserfire or light grenades or  _ something _ the second the airlock unsealed itself, so the empty, silent corridor that greeted him instead was a bit of a letdown.

“Anybody home?” the smuggler called as he eased his way onto the other ship, plasma rifle at the ready. His own voice echoed back to him. Lockdown hummed with suspicion as he proceeded.

It wasn’t a large ship. There was a cockpit made to sit two copilots, a bunk room that could have fit a six-mech crew, a couple of single-mech hab suites, a common area with an energon dispensary, and then the cargo bays. 

Only one of the single hab suites looked like it had been touched anytime recently. The place looked like someone had opened an air lock and then shut it before the ravages of space could do anything other than move everything to someplace it wasn’t supposed to be. All of the insulation covers and even the mattress had been tugged off the berth and thrown into one corner while the berth itself was piled with half-unpacked boxes of medical supplies. Empty energon cubes, packing materials, and datapads were strewn across the rest of the floorspace.

Lockdown scratched his chin again and reached down to pick up one of the datapads. It clicked on to display the title,  _ Help! My Newspark Won’t Sleep! And Other Concerns of Firsttime Creators _ . Something tugged slightly at the smuggler’s conscience, and he quickly tossed the datapad aside before it had time to take root.

Whoever had lived on this freighter, they were long gone, he told himself as he made his way back to the cargo bays. Someone had probably come by and raided the ship before it drifted Lockdown's way, killing or capturing any passengers.

And left all the cargo behind.

Lockdown frowned at the first of the two cargo bays, which was still completely loaded with... well, junk, from what he could tell. Usually, freighters were hauling crates of all the same cargo, but this one was just full of mixmatched boxes, crates, and sacks of Primus knew what. Some of it looked military, but just as much of it looked like alien domesticwares. Lockdown pried the lid off one of the nearest crates to find it full of organic clothing. The smuggler left them where they were and headed farther down the hall to see if the second cargo bay was any more promising.

It wasn't.

"Well... ain't you a conundrum," Lockdown grumbled, kicking at a box of datapads about energon mining.

There was one possible explanation: whoever had been on this ship had gone absolutely postal from being in deep space alone for too long and taken off into the void after some delusion or other. Drifter madness wasn't unusual, but it didn't explain the cargo. That would have had to be acquired before the ship left civilization, and over some time, by the looks of it.

There was one more door on the ship that Lockdown hadn't tried yet—a storage room he’d guess—and the smuggler headed there now, reflecting that if there wasn't a fortune in illegal arms or something stashed in there, then he was going to set the navcomp for this whole uncanny place to the center of the nearest star before he left it.

The door wasn't locked, which wasn't a promising start, but Lockdown tugged it open anyway. He almost closed it again just as soon when the stench of spilled energon hit him—spilled energon that had been sitting for a while no less.

"What in Primus's gleamin' backside..." the smuggler choked, waving his servo in front of his face as he peered in.

It was, in fact, a decently sized storage room, its walls stacked with well-secured boxes of the kind of supplies one might expect to find on any deep vessel that Cybertronians called home: energon filters, cleaning solvents, armor polishes, etc. However, curled in the middle of the floor and surrounded by drying energon, oil, and other mech fluids that Lockdown didn't care to identify, was a seeker with an all-too-familiar red, white, and blue color scheme.

"Blood of Unicron," Lockdown breathed.

The bounty on former Decepticon Air Commander Starscream's helm was up to the hundreds of millions of credits by now, but no one in the business had lain optic nor eye on him in orns. Lockdown hadn't even considered making him a target (Megatron's second-in-command was a little over his pay grade), but now here Lockdown managed to stumble upon him half-dead in some random freighter, drifting through a little-traversed section of space. If Lockdown had been religious, he would have said this was divine intervention. He just hoped the seeker was still alive; the bounty for his corpse was significantly less enticing than the one for bringing him in alive.

In his current position, Lockdown couldn't see much more than the seeker's back and wings, purple Decepticon insignias scowling disapprovingly at him. Carefully, so as not to step in any of the mess on the floor, the smuggler started to make his way around to where he could find the seeker's pulse if he had one. Luckily, there was a box of medical supplies right next to Starscream, so Lockdown would have a chance of maintaining said pulse if he did find it. Perhaps whatever injury the Decepticon had suffered was the reason for the medical supplies strewn about his living quarters as well, though Lockdown would have expected there to be energon splashed in other parts of the ship, too, if Starscream had ended up in here while trying to treat himself.

And hold up. Why would Starscream, defected second-in-command of the entire Decepticon army, have a collection of datapads about newsparks in his berthroom?

The question popped into Lockdown's processor just as the bounty hunter caught a glimpse of what Starscream had curled himself around.

At first, he just recoiled in disgust, thinking the seeker was cradling one of his own organs for some reason. Then, the bundle of energon-smeared grey stuff moved slightly and let out the tiniest of squeaks, and Lockdown realized it was something much, much worse.

“No,” the bounty hunter declared, jabbing his hook in the direction of the tiniest newspark he had ever seen. The thing was barely as long as his servo, and looked like it couldn’t have been more than a day old, its derma still wrinkled and loose and… smeared with birthing fluids, he realized, hopping a bit farther away from the mess on the floor with a noise of disgust.

The sparkling chirped again, and one of its scrawny arms made an erratic motion. Starscream didn’t move.

“Oh, you gotta be kiddin’ me,” Lockdown groaned.

Well, at least now he had a clue as to why Starscream had defected so suddenly, but why it had to be  _ his _ problem he wasn’t sure. The bounty hunter crouched down and shuffled closer until he could reach out and touch the seeker. He was still warm (much too warm, actually), so at least he wasn’t dead. Visions of a mansion on Hedonia swam through Lockdown’s helm as he watched the seeker’s dark face for any sign of consciousness, and then he made the mistake of looking back down at the newspark.

Two massive, crimson optics looked back.

“I said, no,” Lockdown told it.

The seekerling opened its mouth and made a hoarse sound like it was trying to cry but couldn’t quite find the energy. Lockdown didn’t know a lot about newsparks, but he was pretty certain that they were supposed to be noisy as the pit. He took in the state of its armor (such as it could be considered armor) again, and reflected that even a newborn seekerling probably wasn’t supposed to be  _ that _ small.

Nor its creator so…  _ not conscious _ .

“No,” he repeated. “No, no, no, no,  _ no! _ You ain’t doin’ this to me, kid! This is the biggest break o’ my whole life, and I ain’t gonna let some brat who ain’t even learned to cry yet spoil it for me!”

He got another tiny chirping noise in response, and then—if he hadn’t known that there was no way a newspark that young could show emotions—he would’ve  _ sworn _ that the pathetic little thing  _ scowled _ at him, its tiny face scrunching up in such a perfect impression of its creator that Lockdown couldn’t help but snort with laughter.

“Slag,” he sighed, running his servo over the back of his helm. “I’m gonna regret this.”


End file.
